The Captives Part 54

What a wind! It rolled up the road like a leaping carpet, you could almost see its folds and creases. No one about--not a living soul.

"The cab I ordered never came. Lucky thing there was one there," said Paul.

Not a soul about. Does any one live here? She could not see much through the window, and she could hear nothing because the gla.s.s rattled so.

"Here we are!" The cab stopped with a jerk. Here they were then. A gate swung to behind them, there was a little drive with bushes on either side of it and then the house.

Not a very handsome house, Maggie thought. A dull square grey with chimneys like ears in exactly the right places. Some pieces of paper were whirled up and down by the wind, they danced about the horse's feet. She noticed that the door-handles needed polishing. A cavernous hall, a young girl with untidy hair and a yelping dog received them.

"That's Mitch!" said Paul. "Dear old Mitch. How are you, dear old fellow? Down Mitch! Down! There's a good dog."

The young girl was terrified of Maggie. She gulped through her nose.

"I've put tea in the study, sir," she said.

"Tea at once, little woman, eh?" said Paul. "I'm dying for some. Thank you, Emily. All well? That's right. Dear, dear, It IS nice to be home again."

Yes, he was nervous, poor Paul. She felt a great tenderness for him, but she could not say the right words. She should have said: "It is nice," but it was not. The hall was so cold and dark, and all over the house windows were rattling.

They went straight into the study. What a room! It reminded Maggie at once, in its untidiness and discomfort, of her father's, study, and that thought struck a chill into her very heart, so that she had to pause for a moment and control herself. There were piles of newspapers heaped up against the shelves; books run to the ceiling, old, old books with the covers tumbling off them. On the stone mantelpiece was a perfect litter--old pipes, bundles of letters, a ball of string, some yellow photographs, a crucifix and a small plant dead and shrivelled in its pot.

"Now then, darling. Hurrah for some tea!"

She poured it out and he watched her in an ecstasy. Strangely she began to be frightened and a little breathless, as though the walls of the room were slowly closing in. The tea had been standing a long time, it was very strong and chill.

The house was a firing-ground of rattle and whirs, but there were no human sounds anywhere. There was dust all over the room.

They had said nothing for some time.

He spoke suddenly, his voice husky and awkward, as though he were trying a new voice for the first time.

"Maggie!" he said. "Don't sit so far away. Come over here."

She crossed over to him. He, with an arm that seemed to be suddenly of iron, pulled her on to his knee. She was rebellious. Her whole body stiffened. She did not want this, she did not want this! Some voice within cried out: "Take care! Take care!" ... He pressed her close to him; he kissed her furiously, savagely, her eyes, her mouth, her cheek.

She could feel his heart pounding beneath his clothes like a savage beast. His hands were all about her; he was crushing her so that she was hurt, but she did not feel that at all; there was something else ...

With all her might she fought down her resistance. This was her duty.

She must obey. But something desolate and utterly, utterly lonely crept away and cried bitterly, watching her surrender.

CHAPTER III

SKEATON-ON-SEA

She was swinging higher, higher, higher--swinging with that delightful rhythm that one knows best in dreams, lazily, idly, and yet with purpose and resolve. She was swinging far above the pain, the rebellion, the surrender. That was left for ever; the time of her tears, of her loneliness was over. Above her, yet distant, was a golden cloud, soft, iridescent, and in the heart of this lay, she knew, the solution of the mystery; when she reached it the puzzle would be resolved, and in a wonderful tranquillity she could rest after her journey. Nearer and nearer she swung; the cloud was a blaze of gold so that she must not look, but could feel its warmth and heat already irradiating about her. Only to know! ... to connect the two worlds, to find the bridge, to destroy the gulf!

Then suddenly the rhythm changed. She was descending again; slowly the cloud diminished, a globe of light, a ball of fire, a dazzling star.

The air was cold, her eyes could not penetrate the dark; with a sigh she awoke.

It was early morning, and a filmy white shadow pervaded the room. For a moment she did not know where she was; she saw the ghostly shadows of chairs, of the chest of drawers, of a high cupboard. Then the large picture of "The Crucifixion," very, very dim, reminded her. She knew where she was; she turned and saw her husband sleeping at her side, huddled, like a child, his face on his arm, gently breathing, in the deepest sleep. She watched him. There had been a moment that night when she had hated him, hated him so bitterly that she could have fought him and even killed him. There had been another moment after that, when she had been so miserable that her own death seemed the only solution, when she had watched him tumble into sleep and had herself lain, with burning eyes and her flesh dry and hot, staring into the dark, ashamed, humiliated. Then the old Maggie had come to her rescue, the old Maggie who bade her make the best of her conditions whatever they might be, who told her there was humour in everything, hope always, courage everywhere, and that in her own inviolable soul lay her strength, that no one could defeat her did she not defeat herself.

Now, most strangely, in that early light, she felt a great tenderness for him, the tenderness of the mother for the child. She put out her hand, touched his shoulder, stroked it with her hand, laid her head against it. He, murmuring in his sleep, turned towards her, put his arm around her and so, in the shadow of his heart, she fell into deep, dreamless slumber.

At breakfast that morning she felt with him a strange shyness and confusion. She had never been shy with him before. At the very first she had been completely at her ease; that had been one of his greatest attractions for her. But now she realised that she would be for a whole fortnight alone with him, that she did not know him in the least, and that he himself was strangely embarra.s.sed by his own discoveries that he was making.

So they, both of them, took the world that was on every side of them, put it in between them and left their personal relationship to wait for a better time.

Maggie was childishly excited. She had, for the first time in her life, a house of her own to order and arrange; by the middle of that first afternoon she had forgotten that Paul existed.

She admitted to herself at once, so that there should be no pretence about the matter, that the house was hideous. "Yes, it's hideous," she said aloud, standing in the middle of the dining-room and looking about her. It never could have been very much of a house, but they (meaning Paul and Grace) had certainly not done their best for it.

Maggie had had no education, she had not perhaps much natural taste, but she knew when things and people were sympathetic, and this house was as unsympathetic as a house could well be. To begin with, the wall-papers were awful; in the dining-room there was a dark dead green with some kind of pink flower; the drawing-room was dressed in a kind of squashed strawberry colour; the wall-paper of the staircases and pa.s.sages was of imitation marble, and the three bedrooms were pink, green, and yellow, perfect horticultural shows.

It was the distinctive quality of all the wall-papers that nothing looked well against them, and the cheap reproductions in gilt frames, the religious prints, the photographs (groups of the Rev. Paul at Cambridge, at St. Ermand's Theological College, with the Skeaton Band of Hope) were all equally forlorn and out of place.

It was evident that everything in the house was arranged and intended to stay for ever where it was, the chairs against the walls, the ornaments on the mantelpieces, the photograph-frames, the plush mats, the bright red pots with ferns, the long blue vases, and yet the impression was not one of discipline and order. Aunt Anne's house had been untidy, but it had had an odd life and atmosphere of its own. This house was dead, utterly and completely dead. The windows of the dining-room looked out on to a lawn and round the lawn was a stone wall with broken gla.s.s to protect it. "As though there were anything to steal!" thought Maggie. But then you cannot expect a garden to look its best at the beginning of April. "I'll wait a little," thought Maggie.

"And then I'll make this house better. I'll destroy almost everything in it."

About mid-day with rather a quaking heart Maggie penetrated the kitchen. Here were gathered together Alice the cook, Emily the housemaid, and Clara the between maid.

Alice was large, florid, and genial. Nevertheless at once Maggie distrusted her. No servant had any right to appear so wildly delighted to see a new mistress. Alice had doubtless her own plans. Emily was prim and conceited, and Clara did not exist. Alice was ready to do everything that Maggie wanted, and it was very apparent at once that she had not liked "Miss Grace."

"Ah, that'll be much better than the way Miss Grace 'ad it, Mum. In their jackets, Mum, very well. Certainly. That would be better."

"I think you'd better just give us what seems easiest for dinner, Cook," said Maggie, thereby handing herself over, delivered and bound.

"Very well, Mum--I'm sure I'll do my best," said Alice.

Early on that first afternoon she was taken to see the Church. For a desperate moment her spirits failed her as she stood at the end of the Lane and looked. This was a Church of the newest red brick, and every seat was of the most shining wood. The East End window was flaming purple, with a crimson Christ ascending and yellow and blue disciples amazed together on the ground. Paul stood flushed with pride and pleasure, his hand through Maggie's arm.

"That's a Partright window," he said with that inflection that Maggie was already beginning to think of as "his public voice."

"I'm afraid, Paul dear," said Maggie, "I'm very ignorant."

"Don't know Partright? Oh, he's the great man of the last thirty years--did the great East window of St. Martin's, Pontefract. We had a job to get him I can tell you. Just look at that purple."

"On the right you'll see the Memorial Tablet to our brave lads who fell in the South African War--Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori--very appropriate. Brave fellows, brave fellows! Just behind you, Maggie, is the Mickleham Font, one of the finest specimens of modern stone-work in the county--given to us by Sir Joseph Mickleham--Mickleham Hall, you know, only two miles from here. He used to attend morning service here frequently. Died five years ago. Fine piece of work!"

Maggie looked at it. It was enormous, a huge battlement of a font in dead white stone with wreaths of carved ivy creeping about it.

"It makes one feel rather shivery," said Maggie.

"Now you must see our lectern," said Paul eagerly.

And so it continued. There was apparently a great deal to be said about the Lectern, and then about the Choir-Screen, and then about the Reredos, and then about the Pulpit, and then about the Vestry, and then about the Collecting-Box for the Poor, and then about the Ha.s.socks, and finally about the Graveyard ... To all this Maggie listened and hoped that she made the proper answers, but the truth of the matter was that she was cold and dismayed. The Chapel had been ugly enough, but behind its ugliness there had been life; now with the Church as with the house there was no life visible. Paul, putting his hand on her shoulder, said: